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Locked Down by Jess Anastasi

Locked Down by Jess Anastasi

Gabe Lopez travels to Everness, Texas, to investigate and profile a dangerous group of white supremacists living on the outskirts of the small town. As far as he’s concerned, the assignment can’t end soon enough. When he stops to help Matt York with a flat tire, he anticipates a sexy distraction—nothing more. But Matt has a knack for getting himself into trouble, and soon Gabe is torn between protecting Matt and doing his job.

Matt left a successful life and business back in San Francisco to fulfill a promise to his aunt: find his runaway cousin and bring him home. But Tommy is on a dangerous path, and someone is trying to scare Matt off—or worse… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Homomisia & homomisic slurs
Racism

The Final Dawn by Jess Anastasi

The Final Dawn by Jess Anastasi

Rian Sherron is a lot of things. Captain of the spaceship Imojenna. Ex-war hero. Ex-assassin. For years, he’s traveled from one end of the galaxy to the other, both trying to escape his demons and get revenge on the shape-shifting aliens responsible for his slow demise into hell.

That all changed the day Rian rescued an Arynian priestess from slave traders. Ella Kinton is everything Rian both fears and admires. Ella is everything he never let himself admit he wanted. Together, they must face a harrowing choice—come together and defeat Reidar, or fall apart, leaving the universe in total chaos.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Torture
Kidnapping

The Empty Night by Jess Anastasi

The Empty Night by Jess Anastasi

Captain Qaelan Forster is used to trouble. He lives on the wrong side of the law and he’s on the most-wanted lists. He’s mixed up in his cousin’s mess who has problems on a cosmic level—like shape-shifting aliens who want them dead. But Qaelan’s not prepared for the cheeky kind of trouble called Camille Blackstone, whose infamous father has any man interested in his daughter executed.

After Camille drags Qaelan into an impulsive act of rebellion, she finds herself trying to defend the sexy captain from her overprotective father’s wrath, even if she has to handcuff herself to the sexy captain to keep him alive. However, it soon becomes apparent there are much more dangerous things lurking in the dark corners of the universe than a vengeful pirate lord. And she’s just landed in the middle of it.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Torture
Kidnapping

Take Down by Jess Anastasi

Take Down by Jess Anastasi

Attraction sizzles when Danny Jones sets eyes on Deputy Jake Perez, despite meeting over the discovery of a mutilated corpse. But being with Jake could cost Danny his family, and being with Danny could cost Jake the very thing that brought him to Everness, Texas—revenge against the man who killed his brother. How much will Jake sacrifice to take down a psychotic criminal and finally see justice served?

After college, Danny thrived as a gay man in Houston. But when his mom’s cancer brings him back to small, conservative Everness, he must go back into the closet or risk the wrath of his abusive father—a choice made even harder when Danny starts to see a future for him and Jake… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism & white supremacy mentioned
Homomisia
Outing
Physical & verbal parental abuse
Parent with breast cancer
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a brother
Murder

Escape Velocity by Jess Anastasi

Escape Velocity by Jess Anastasi

At first, Dr. Sacha Dalton is simply curious about the prisoner of war admitted to her med-lab…until she sees who it is. For Commander Kai Yang–the commander of the battleship Valiant Knox–has long been thought dead. Killed in action. But after almost a year and half, he’s returned home. Returned to her.

Kai is recovering from his ordeal and under the watchful care of Sacha, his childhood friend and the widow of his best friend. Only now, their friendship has grown and deepened into something far more complicated. Yet as Kai’s body recovers, his psyche remains broken. How could he ever be the man he was, and the man Sacha deserves? But an intergalactic war has a way of forcing a man to be the hero he was always meant to be…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Torture
Kidnapping & captivity

Damage Control by Jess Anastasi

Damage Control by Jess Anastasi

Nick-named Captain Hardass by the new recruits, Captain Leigh Alphin is captain of the Fighter Force of the battleship Valiant Knox. He’s honorable, straightforward, and hard as nails – except for the soft spot he has for a young woman he rescued off a transport that was under attack. Now that she’s one of his new recruits, it’s imperative he stop thinking about her in that way. Especially now that the Knox has been secretly infiltrated by the enemy.

Mia Wolf’s new commander is icy, no-BS, and completely gorgeous. His glances send heat searing through her. Neither of them can afford to make this mistake, yet desire takes hold, consuming them. For the first time, Leigh’s iron sense of honor falters as his heart fights for love… and against an enemy trying to destroy everything they hold dear.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Attempted rape, on-page

Burn It Down by Jess Anastasi

Burn It Down by Jess Anastasi

When an arsonist targets a kind-hearted park ranger, a firefighter steps up to protect him… and overcome his fear of dating in the process.

Park Ranger Troy Hurst has his hands full with a long, hot summer causing fires to break out all over the Sam Houston National Forest, and it looks like the weather isn’t the only culprit. But helping two abandoned teenage boys and facing the memory of his own difficult childhood will require all Troy’s strength and courage—he doesn’t have anything left to deal with the increasingly dangerous fires… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Parental abuse
Physical & verbal intimate partner abuse
Alcoholism
Homelessness

The Hidden Memory of Objects by Danielle Mages Amato

The Hidden Memory of Objects by Danielle Mages Amato

Megan Brown’s brother, Tyler, is dead, but the cops are killing him all over again. They say he died of a drug overdose, potentially suicide—something Megan cannot accept. Determined to figure out what happened in the months before Tyler’s death, Megan turns to the things he left behind. After all, she understands the stories objects can tell—at fifteen, she is a gifted collage artist with a flair for creating found-object pieces. However, she now realizes that her artistic talent has developed into something more: she can see memories attached to some of Tyler’s belongings—and those memories reveal a brother she never knew.

Enlisting the help of an artifact detective who shares her ability and specializes in murderabilia—objects tainted by violence or the deaths of their owners… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Grief & loss depiction
Death of a brother to suicide by drug overdose (theme)

Nexus by Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings

Nexus by Sasha Alsberg & Lindsay Cummings

Her ship is gone, her crew is captured and notorious mercenary Androma Racella is no longer the powerful Bloody Baroness, but a fugitive ruthlessly hunted across the Mirabel Galaxy. The bloodthirsty Queen Nor now rules most of the galaxy through a mind-control toxin and she’ll stop at nothing to destroy her most hated adversary.

Andi will risk anything, even her precious freedom, to find a cure. Stranded with her unlikely ally, Dex, on the unforgiving ice planet of Solera, their plan to infiltrate a black-market city proves dangerously irresistible… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Death of a friend
Murder
Mind control

This Vast Land by Stephen E Ambrose

This Vast Land by Stephen E. Ambrose

In a story muscled with truth and imagination, Stephen E. Ambrose recounts the epoch-making 1803 expedition of Lewis and Clark through the words of a young man. Finding foes and friends among Native Americans, surviving sickness and hunger, choosing between a woman and the life he left behind, George Shannon grows up as the corps forges a way west. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, Ambrose creates the fictional diary of nineteen-year-old George Shannon, who was in fact the youngest member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. He conjures the journey west with stunning clarity, calling on the bravery of Daniel Boone, the pragmatic courage of Sacajawea, the overarching, relentless vision of Meriwether Lewis.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Racism
Alcohol consumption
Smoking
Murder
Scalping
War themes
Animal death